Today is the march equinox, and, being so, the sun, as seen
anywhere on earth, rises at precisely the due east point
from wherever one is (except at either pole) and sets
exactly in the west. Today day and night are of equal
length.
Recently i have been toiling more concertedly
in the "html fields" to realize a vision carried within
for more than a year: to complete the work begun
in 1995 to organize and present in hyper-linked form
all of two exceedingly important books from the
Committee for Nuclear
Responsibility, Inc. (CNR), which together comprise
the first two in CNR's series of reports, "Health Effects
of Ionizing Radiation" (HEIR Reports). This edition of
the ratitor's corner is devoted to to emphasizing the
significance of both of these resources and the fact that
a majority of the second is now on-board and available
for all to access and benefit by:

We hope that all physicians will join with health scientists in a
determination to reduce unnecessary x-radiation. As discussed in this
book, this effort can succeed without ever interfering with a
single essential x-ray examination. That is the main route to
prevention of breast cancer. Women will not be willing to forgive
anyone who stands in the way of this objective.

A year ago, i had worked up three chapters from the
first edition -- 1, 41, and 42 -- to provide an overview of the book's
essential conclusions. The second edition, released in April, 1996,
contains the additional fifth section, Response to Critiques of the
First Edition. Since then i have crafted multiple-format
(fancy &
plain html, and
ASCII
text) web versions of ALL of Sections One, Four, and
Five as well as four of the segments at the back:

With everything except Sections Two, Three, and the Index now online,
the point has finally been reached where the full summation of the
author's findings are available to anyone who can access the
web, or knows someone who can.

THE UNEQUIVOCAL FOCUS HERE IS PREVENTION. Everyone who takes
the time to read all or key portions of this book will themselves
become life-promoting agents to correct such tragically mis-informed
statements promulgated through media conduits as "even the best
doctors have no idea what causes breast cancer". From
Chapter 1:

I've recently received in the mail a request for funds to help
breast-cancer research. It said: "Breast cancer is the most
commonly diagnosed cancer in American women today. It is the
leading cause of death among women ages 40 to 44, and the leading
cause of cancer death in women 20 to 54." No argument about
that. Every part of that statement makes it all the more important
for women to know precisely why we say that breast-cancer is largely
preventable. Then the letter added:

"What's worse, even the best doctors have no idea what causes breast
cancer or how to cure it." Cure is indeed problematical, and when
successful, the process itself can be highly unpleasant. All the more
reason why prevention is so very important.

But how can anyone in 1994 say that "even the best doctors have no idea
what causes breast cancer"? This error also went out over NBC national
news during October 1994, in the television network's coverage of
Breast-Cancer Month. In reality, medical science has clearly known for
some 20 years already that ionizing radiation is a prominent and
proven cause of breast-cancer. Ionizing radiations
include x-rays and gamma rays, as well as beta, alpha, and some other
high-speed particles. (Radium is used in medicine as a source of
powerful gamma rays.)

We think "the best doctors" do indeed know about the role of ionizing
radiation as a prominent, proven cause of breast-cancer, but it is
astonishing that both lay and medical sources commonly fail to
mention this outstanding fact of medical science: Past medical
exposure to ionizing radiation, 10, 20, 30, 40, and more years back
in a woman's life, can cause breast-cancer.

Radiation exposure in the first few months of life may be the most
serious in causation of later breast-cancer. In fact, irradiation of
the breasts between age 0 (newborn) and age 9-years may cause
many-fold more cases of breast-cancer, over the subsequent
lifetime, than does irradiation of women over 40 years of age with
the same amount (dose) of ionizing radiation.

Dr. John Gofman is exceedingly well-qualified in numerous relevant
and complementary disciplines to have researched and written
this book, given the record of his life as a dedicated
physician and scientist who himself, cites "a prime rule for
physicians [as being] ``First, do no harm.''"
(Chapter
42). This is consistent with his being given the
"Gold-Headed Cane Award" from UC Medical School, 1946,
"presented to the graduating senior who most fully personifies
the qualities of a ``true physician.'' (For more qualification,
see his exemplary Curriculum Vitae, included
at the bottom of this file.)

Along with the people he cites in the book's Preface And
Acknowledgments, was the tell-tale expression of one who
is eminently well-suited to the task of providing fastidiously
independent research and analysis skills to study this
critically important subject:

Lastly, there is one special place in my heart, for an
assist which was absolutely essential. That place is
occupied by the superb library of our medical school
at the University of California in San Francisco. What
a treasure -- a collection so rich as to make the trip
back through 100 years of medicine an easy one. And the
cooperation of the librarians was superb.

Make no mistake: the level and degree of unconditional
obedience to the "Rules of Research"2 has been scrupulously
adhered to in the breadth-and-depth of information studied and
presented in Preventing Breast
Cancer. Combine with this the description in Chapter 1,
Part 2. For
Whom Is This Book Intended?, and you have some sense of this
book's monumental import and significance for any lay person,
as well as professional:

This book is intended for anyone interested in breast-cancer, and
its prevention. Interest in the problem is the only requirement. The
book is for medical professionals and for individuals with the
greatest personal concern: Women in general --- and their
families. Readers do not need to know every medical term in the
stories, because the meaning of the stories will be clear
anyway. No medical skill or knowledge is essential to understand what
will be presented.

Many chapters will begin with a description of what happened, and will
end with specific calculations based on the events. Of course, many
readers will skip the numbers. The "easy readers" should feel no guilt
for skipping the latter part of various chapters. Lots of professionals,
also, read scientific journals without ever examining the calculations
and tables there. But numbers are in journals, and also in this book,
for a very important reason: To allow people to check for
themselves exactly how the quantitative conclusions were reached, and
to evaluate the validity for themselves.

Thus the conclusions presented are verfiable to the concerned
reader no matter what one's "professional" background. This is
precisely the sort of genuinely independent analysis of life-and-death
issues so essential in our day-and-age to provide all of us
with information that can restore our experience of true participation
in the critical decisions we make every day affecting our own lives
and the lives of those in our communities.

Which brings
us to a fundamental point every person in our society needs to be
constantly re-minded of. As is stated on the
back side of
the title page,

Research in this field is not commercially viable. Most radiation
research, analysis, and publications are sponsored by government grants.
CNR neither requests nor would accept any government funding. The low
price of the HEIR Reports is made possible by the foundations and
individuals who generously support these scholarly works, and by the
refusal of the author to accept royalties or payment of any other sort
from CNR.

People don't seem to re cognize that "Official Studies" and
"Official Pronouncements" are themselves rarely disinterested
-- especially since their funding has, on the most practical of
levels, a host of "strings attached" irrespective of whether or
not there are ever any explicit "guidelines" included when the
funding is given. The monies themselves are the
strings. John Gofman is well-acquainted with such matters in
his own experience of losing all funding for continued research
into the health effects of radiation conducted at Livermore
Lab's Biomedical Research Division -- which he himself
founded by invitation of the AEC in 1963. This loss of
funding occured when he and colleague Arthur Tamplin became
increasingly concerned about the dangers of such exposure in
the late 1960s from their research in this
area.3

Writing this book has been a happy task. It deals with a
very serious problem, with a very happy ending. It would be
hard to think of anything more rewarding for this effort
that the knowledge that we can begin the task of breast-cancer
prevention -- now.

John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.
from the "Preface and Acknowledgements"

Along with other "paths of transformation", we need to seek out
and pay attention to all the capable women and men independent
research scientists we can find to provide us with precise
life-affirming information and analysis so desparately needed to
make the informed decisions about the host of issues confronting
us and our collective future. Gofman is such a person
and offers a fabulous wealth of such life-supporting
facts. Another indication of the dispassionate concerns
of such an independent researcher is expressed near the close
of Chapter One's
Part 1. The
Bottom Line:

The finding of this book constitutes an example of what can happen from
exposing people to new agents, such as x-rays, when no one knows the
long-term consequences. Readers will see the innocent enthusiasm, the
repeated assurances that the procedures were safe, and the power of the
"technological imperative" to suppress the idea that there might be a
problem with anything as wondrous and potentially useful as
x-rays. This is a story of "disaster creep" --- a massive problem
creeping up on society without any recognition.

In science, every important discovery should be challenged and checked
by others, and our finding certainly will be. We will welcome the
genuine, thoughtful critiques. And we expect our finding to be
validated. We arrive at our startling conclusion after
underestimating the past dosage of x-rays, and after using
conversion-factors (conversion from dose to subsequent cancers) which
derive from real-world observations. There is just no doubt that
past radiation exposure accounts for a major share of our recent and
current breast-cancer problem. The evidence for our finding is
overwhelming --- if one simply looks.

A year ago today a
core hyper-linked segment of Dr. Gofman's
1990 book, Radiation-Induced
Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: An Independent Analysis
was announced: Section 5:
Disproof
of Any Safe Dose or Dose-Rate of Ionizing Radiation,
with Respect to Induction of Cancer in Humans.4 The implications of this
analysis are "required reading" for everyone concerned about
the integrity of our collective gene pool. As Gofman stated
in the Fall of 1995, "We have found no refutation of our
proof. On the contrary, our method is extensively confirmed
in the 1993 report of the United Nations (UNSCEAR 1993,
esp. pp.627-636, p.681, p.696 Table 17)."5

Radiation-Induced Cancer
is the first in this series of HEIR reports. It is consistently
referred to and built upon in greater detail throughout
Preventing Breast
Cancer. With the help of two women, work is
proceeding to continue creating HTML versions of the remaining
33 chapters from Sections Two -- Stories of the Exposures in
Our Master Table and Three -- Stories of Exposures Not
in Our Master Table.6 i am also committted to
working up the remaining chapters of
Radiation-Induced
Cancer until all of this immensely important and
significant book is likewise accessible.

Grateful am i to have the chance of participating in and
contributing to the building of a truly useful electronic
world library where essential reading and information is
freely available in its entirety (just as in any
"conventional" library), and extended in this unique form
to be fully interlinked with all associated cross-references
hooked up. Gofman's subject matter and writing style readily
lend themselves to such a hyper-linked format -- there is a
great deal of explicit cross-referencing made throughout each
chapter to other portions of both books or works he authored or
studied prior to analyzing and writing up his own research.

The work of completing web versions of both CNR's HEIR reports
will proceed. Beyond what is to come, there is SO MUCH
valuable information already in place! i will conclude with the
following examples of just a few of the notable areas of
exploration awaiting you in
Preventing Breast Cancer:

We have noted that the rates of x-ray examinations and nuclear
medicine examinations, per thousand people, both have increased
(Chapter 37). Is this cause for concern? In Chapter 28, Table 28-B
illustrated a fundamental principle: If nearly everyone receives extra
radiation, even low doses will induce a huge amount of cancer, in the
aggregate. The menace is never just the size of an individual dose (in
rads). It matters enormously how many people receive it (in
person-rads). And the related principle is this: When large
numbers of people are receiving extra radiation, very large aggregate
benefits in health accrue even from small reductions in dose per
exposure. So friendly vigilance can make a big difference.

The above segments will give anyone sufficient appreciation
of the wealth of information this book comprises and offers
to all of us. i include below all of Part 4 in
Chapter 48 since the message is so particularly exciting
for me -- just consider the effect creation of such
Independent Information will provide you
and your community should you elect to pursue a collaborative
endeavor to manifest an instance of this where you live.

A double-dose of wishful thinking represents a big obstacle to
solving the overdose problem.

-
The referring physicians who order the x-ray exams
presently know virtually nothing about radiation, so they wish
to believe that risks are just "hypothetical" and that they need
not take any responsibility.

-
The patients hate to irritate their physicians, with whom
they would like to have a warm relationship, so they too wish
to believe that radiation risks are just "hypothetical" and that
there is no need for them to challenge anyone.

These two sets of people comfortably reinforce each other, while the
overdose problem persists.

4a. Getting Realistic? The Meaning of WIXMEASE

On the average, an individual's personal risk from a single x-ray
exam is small, and is even smaller from the share of radiation which
is the overdose. So, it is not realistic to think that
individual physicians or individual patients are going to look beyond
their personal stakes and to take responsibility for the
aggregate impact from millions and millions of overdoses,
occurring year after year --- an impact particularly dangerous for
patients who have inherited an extra vulnerability to ionizing
radiation (see p.181; also
Part 5, below).

Then does anyone care? The women who have committed themselves to
preventing as many cases of breast cancer as possible, must surely
care about the radiation-induced cases which result from careless overdosing.

It may be in their power to establish a practical service which would
solve the careless overdosing problem while not disturbing the
mutual comfort of the referring physicians and their patients. What
about a Women's Independent X-ray Measurement Service? WIXMEASE.

4b. The Effect of Information

The first step in any serious effort to eliminate careless overdosing
would seem to be an independent measurement system to find out where
the overdoses occur. A lot could be accomplished just by using TLDs,
which can measure entrance dose during an examination without
interfering with the x-ray image (see p.298).

For years, a Monitoring-by-Mail Service has existed ---
but not for the public --- at the University of Wisconsin's
Medical Physics Lab in Madison, Wisconsin
(Telephone: 608-262-6320). The Mail Service supplies TLDs to
physicians and others who irradiate people, receives the TLDs back
by mail, and evaluates the dose on each TLD.

Women of course are perfectly capable of developing their own expertise,
or of hiring expertise, to run a similar service --- with one big
difference: The TLDs might belong to the patients, and the dose
information would become part of a growing database, openly accessible
to other patients, referring physicians, and x-ray offices. Finally,
it would become possible, on a current basis, to avoid places
which typically give higher doses (or more repeats) than other
places. Careless places would have either to "shape up," or to fail.

If information on comparative doses were readily available (for
instance, on the Internet), what physician would refer patients
to a high-dose facility, or to one which declined to
participate --- and what patient would go? After a while,
insurance systems might refuse reimbursement to non-participants
in an independent, trustworthy measurement service. WIXMEASE
would not need to remain the only service, if others decided to
provide similar, accessible services. The more competition,
the more protection against carelessness and corruption at any
single service.

4c. The Effect of Independent Information

We do not underestimate the problems of getting a pilot project
funded and successfully underway in one or more metropolitan
areas. However, we certainly do not underestimate the talent
and tenacity of the women who, in the past few years, collected
2.6 million signatures from U.S. citizens demanding a more
intense national effort to reduce the incidence of breast
cancer, who managed to increase the federal budget for
breast-cancer research by a great deal, and who managed to
establish a special tax in California to do something
new about preventing breast cancer
(Chapter 43,
Part 3).

Nor do we underestimate the probable resistance from some
physicians who will be fearful of patients "having information
which they can't understand."

Today, patients who ask x-ray offices about doses often
receive answers --- and those answers may sometimes be pure
fiction, looked up in a manual of what the dose should
be. Isolated answers, even if true, do nothing to eliminate
the undeniable overdose problem. By contrast, independent,
credible, systematic, current sources of information, based
on actual measured doses, would do a very great deal to
eliminate careless overdosing.

to be open to the limitless unknown possibilities of existence
and its manifestation within through consciousness is what it's
all about. nothing else occupies this pre-eminent position and
imperative in our lives and our being. this is the gift we
ALL possess for the entirety of our lives. it is always
"here" with us, ready to join with our awareness as we choose to
be open to it in the moment.

Grade and high school in Cleveland. A.B. in Chemistry from
Oberlin College, 1939.

Ph.D. in Nuclear/Physical Chemistry from the University of
California at Berkeley, 1943. Dissertation: Discovery of
Pa-232, U-232, Pa-233, and U-233. Proof of the slow and
fast neutron fissionability of U-233. Discovery of the
4n + 1 radioactive series.

M.D. from the School of Medicine, University of California at
San Francisco, 1946. Internship in internal medicine at the
University of California Hospital, San Francisco, 1946-1947.

Positions:

Academic appointment in 1947 in the Division of Medical Physics,
Department of Physics, University of California at
Berkeley. Advancement in 1954 to the full professorship, a
position held to the present time, with shift to Emeritus status
in December, 1973. Under recent University reorganization, the
affiliation is now the Division of Biochemistry, Department of
Molecular and Cell Biology.

Concurrent appointment since 1947 as either Instructor or
Lecturer in Medicine in the Department of Medicine, University
of California, San Francisco.

Additional appointments held:

Associate Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
1963-1968. Resigned this post to gain more time for research
and teaching. Remained as Research Associate at Livermore
through February, 1973.

Founder and first Director of the Biomedical Research Division
of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, 1963-1964. This work was
done at the request of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Member, Advisory Board for NERVA (Nuclear Engine Rocket Vehicle
Application), approximately 1963-1966. Member of the Reactor
Safeguard Committees University of California, Berkeley,
approximately 1955-1960.

Group Co-Leader of the Plutonium Project (for the Manhattan
Project) at the University of California, Berkeley,
1941-1943. This work included meetings at Chicago and Oak Ridge
to exchange information and to help DuPont engineers prepare for
the reprocessing operations at Hanford, Washington.

The Lyman Duff Lectureship Award of the American Heart
Association in 1965, for research in atherosclerosis and coronary
heart disease; lecture published in 1966 as "Ischemic Heart
Disease, Atherosclerosis, and Longevity," in Circulation
34: 679-697.

The Stouffer Prize (shared) 1972, for outstanding contributions
to research in arterioslerosis.

American College of Cardiology, 1974; selection as one of
twenty-five leading researchers in cardiology of the past
quarter-century.

University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library,
1988; announcement of the "Gofman Papers" established in the
History of Science and Technology Special Collection (October
1988, Bancroftiana, No. 97: 10-11).

The
Right Livelihood Award of the Right Livelihood
Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden, 1992; Dr. Jakob von
Uexkull's statement, in presenting the award for
John Gofman's "pioneering work in exposing the health
effects of low-level radiation," was: "The
Right Livelihood Award for vision and work forming an
essential contribution to making life more whole,
healing our planet, and uplifting humanity."